ABSTRACT
One wonders whether the term hypochondria should be retained at all in scientific literature, however useful it may be as a symptom category in general medicine. Cases whose symptom-presentation is particularly prone to achieve the ends, are, when all physical investigation ceases to reveal results and when all surgical and medical treatment fails to achieve any amelioration, finally classified by the practitioner as hypochondria. It should be added that some hypochondriacal symptoms can, and commonly do, arise in almost every variety of nervous and mental illness, particularly in involutional melancholia and in some cases of schizophrenic and paranoid psychoses. The castration phantasy and its attendant anxiety prevent the normal reduction of tension through sexuality and orgasm or even through their equivalent thoughts, anticipation or unconscious phantasy.
